NEAL STEPHENSON
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Down the row is a man. Hiro recognizes him by the strange shape of his head, which just gets wider until it reaches his shoulders. He is holding a freshly cut bamboo pole in one hand, torn from the trellis.
Raven strokes one end of it with his other hand, and a chunk falls off. Something flickers in that hand, the blade of a knife apparently. He has just cut off the end of the pole at an acute angle to make it into a spear.
He throws it fluidly. The motion is calm and beautiful. The
spear disappears because it is coming straight at Hiro.
Hiro does not have time to adopt the proper stance, but this is fine since he has already adopted it. Whenever he has a katana in his hands he adopts it automatically, otherwise he fears that he may lose his balance and carelessly lop off one of his extremities. Feet parallel and pointed straight ahead, right foot in front of the left foot, katana held down at groin level like an extension of the phallus. Hiro raises the tip and slaps at the spear with the side of the blade, diverting it just enough; it goes into a slow sideways spin, the point missing Hiro just barely and entangling itself in a vine on Hiro’s right. The butt end swings around and gets hung up on the left, tearing out a number of vines as it comes to a stop. It is heavy, and traveling very fast.
Raven is gone.
Mental note: Whether or not Raven intended to take on a
bunch of Crips and Enforcers singlehandedly tonight, he didn’t even bother to pack a gun.
Another burst of gunfire sounds from several rows over.
Hiro has been standing here for rather a long time, thinking about what just happened. He cuts through the next row of vines and heads in the direction of the muzzle flash, running his mouth: “Don’t shoot this way, T-Bone, I’m on your side, man.”
“Motherfucker threw a stick into my chest, man!” T.Bone
complains.
When you’re wearing armor, getting hit by a spear just isn’t
such a big deal anymore.
“Maybe you should just forget it,” Hiro says. He is having to
cut his way through a lot of rows to reach T-Bone, but as long as T’Bone keeps talking, Hiro can find him.
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